Swim and dive head coach, teams set 39 school records

Chapman men’s and women’s swimming and diving set 39 school records, but head coach Juliet Suess sees more meaning to the season than what the numbers tell. Photo by Larry Newman

Juliet Suess, the men’s and women’s swimming and diving head coach at Chapman University, never allowed personal trials to determine the outcome of their swimming career.

Suess’s nickname on the swim team in high school was “Jet,” and one day after practice, their head coach Mary Dauw made a comment on the nickname. This would give the drive that Suess had to become an exceptional swimmer.

“(Coach Dauw) said, ‘I know why they call you “Jet.” It’s because sometimes you hit the gas, and then sometimes you’re coasting. That’s sometimes like you in practice. You’re still going fast, but you’re not trying,’” Suess said. “And I was like, ‘Well, screw you.’ I was super sour about it, and so I was like, ‘I’m going to prove you wrong.’”

Suess wants their athletes to feel deeply appreciated on the team, with no conditions attached.

This comment gave Suess motivation, but as they strived to get more competitive, Suess was hit with illnesses right before important conference competitions in their sophomore and junior years. And even with a more successful senior year making it to the state championships, Suess had to deal with their mom’s passing.

In their transition to Occidental College, which is located in Los Angeles, Suess said that thankfully they had head coaches like Alex Kuhn and Shea Manning to continue molding their swim career and to help with personal matters.

Suess — who also goes by “Coach J” — wanted to have the same effect on future swimmers after graduating college, providing valuable mentorship in any way they can.

“I just want somebody to, at the end of the day, just be able to rely on me or say that something about their life was better because I helped them through something,” Suess said. “I just want to be a footnote in someone else’s story and have my own beautiful story around that, but still, you know, having those little impacts.”

Before coaching at Chapman, Suess was an assistant coach for eight years, working at several colleges including Occidental College and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) College. 

Suess started coaching at Chapman last year after visiting Chapman’s pool deck for a competition, and after being impressed by the pool deck and facilities, they told CMS head coach Charlie Griffiths that they wanted to coach at Chapman.

This past season, Suess and their teams broke 39 school records. They have lofty goals in the long term — like being a top 25 NCAA Division III team, top three in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) and scholar all-American team — but they wanted to focus on team culture in their first head coaching season.

“I came in and said that this is going to be a culture building year,” Suess said. “(We ended up placing fourth in SCIAC, but) if we (got) dead last in (the SCIAC) conference, but we build the culture that we want and we’re proud of what we do at the end of it, that’s fine. 

“I wanted to make sure that we were setting up all of our future for success… and cultivating a team culture that is welcoming, accepting, disciplined, all the things you want a team to be. We’re not going to sacrifice any of that in order to go for these records (or) personal bests.”

Junior biology major Sophie Moylan has been part of the women’s swim team for three years, competing in both the 100 meter and 200 meter butterfly races. Moylan spoke about Suess’s efforts with more structured training, intentionality with team bonding and “Friday Feelings” sessions.

““Throughout the month of January, we would have meetings on Fridays where they would sit and accept feedback from all of us,” Moylan said. “A lot of (the feedback) we actually got to see get addressed and changed. That was really refreshing to have a coach that would openly ask to be criticized and then make the change almost immediately.”

Suess said that this form of open communication between team members led to transparency and opportunities to improve.

“It’s a way that you make sure that you feel heard,” Suess said. “(Friday Feelings) gives me the opportunity to respond to that problem where everyone can hear it and either be held accountable for the change that I promised, or that now, they can understand why we’re doing something the way that we’re doing it. I’m not perfect, I’m a human, and I think that change is a form of enlightenment. If you’re not changing, then you’re not fulfilling your highest destiny.”

Suess also made training sessions more individualized to the athlete by breaking the team into several groups based on race distances and swimming strokes, which tells part of the story about how the team broke over three dozen records.

“Every athlete needs different training, so if you’re only having one group (and) everyone’s doing the same thing, that’s not gonna work,” Suess said. “We had more structured training groups (and) people doing different things at different times to make sure they’re getting the training that they need. It’s catering to what your needs are as an athlete.”

Junior business administration major Cole Kershner has been swimming the past two years at Chapman, competing in the 50 meter freestyle and 100 meter freestyle and butterfly.

Kershner said that this structured training led to major leaps in his personal performance. More importantly, Kershner spoke to how Suess grows swimming athletes not only in performance, but also in mental well being.

“Coach J likes to always promote a very positive mentality,” Kershner said. “If you had a bad race, (Coach J says to) think about what went wrong and move on. Physically, I definitely improved this year because I went from 16th last year to first this year (in the 50 meter freestyle). And mentally, they’ve incorporated mental health training (and) other things like that into our program, so they do really care about the athletes.”  

More than anything else, Suess wants their athletes to feel deeply appreciated on the team, with no conditions attached to this appreciation.

“At the end of the day, they need to know that they’re loved and valued as human beings regardless of how they end up swimming,” Suess said. “My goal in telling them that I love them is for them to know it’s real (and) that (this is) true.”

The humanity that Suess tries to express themself and tries to get their team to express is what made the season memorable for them.

“The placing or the times (we set as records), that’s icing on the cake,” Suess said. “I had an athlete come up to me at the end of conference in tears, and (the athlete) was like, ‘I’m just so proud to be a part of this team, and I’m just so proud to be a Panther.’ That sums it up. That is what I’m most proud of.”